


Collar and Leash

by ivoryandhorn



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Community: cliche_bingo, Drunkenness, Gen, Mind Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-04
Updated: 2009-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-04 17:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivoryandhorn/pseuds/ivoryandhorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The strongest man in Northern Italy bows to one man only.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collar and Leash

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Ошейник и поводок](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11888034) by [miroveha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miroveha/pseuds/miroveha)



> Prompt: _drunkenness &amp; inebriation_
> 
> This is actually an old, half-finished piece that I finally decided to finish and fix up for this challenge.
> 
> (ETA 9/2/17: Many thanks to [miroveha](http://archiveofourown.org/users/miroveha) for the Russian translation! Check it out on AO3 at the link above.)

On that day, on the _last_ day, the collar's buckle broke. The worn leather slithered silently off his neck and into his hands.

Maybe it had been an omen, a portent; God's promise of his deliverance. Lancia just remembers thinking that he'd have to get it fixed, before the voice found out.

The voice never found out.

Back in Italy—acquitted by the Vendichi, shrouded in mourning dress—Lancia stops haunting his old haunts. He doesn't bother to check in with what remains of his friends. He does it more for them than because he wants to be alone, really, because everywhere he goes these days, he feels like the center of a dense cloud—drips of tension, fear, and anger slowly gathering around his limbs until everyone around him suffocates. He stops because no one—not even bartenders, not even busboys—will look him in the eye anymore.

To be fair, neither will he.

It was a dark and balmy night.

Lancia's sitting in his bare bones apartment, drinking—he drinks a lot, these days. There's not much of a reason not to. He likes to tell himself that every shot is a salute to his dead famiglia. This one for Elettra, with her razor-sharp smile and lighting-fast fingers. That one for Vittorio, who always claimed he was unbeatable at poker.

But tonight there's another reason for the glass bottles that crowd his kitchen counters, accusing and empty.

_Lancia, Lancia, will you take me to Japan for Christmas?_

He tosses back one shot, pours another and downs that one too. The thin, hopeful voice that echoes in his head is a memory, that's what he tells himself. From the days when its owner had still been an innocent child, or so Lancia had thought.

"You came in January and left in September," he tells the voice. His own sounds indistinct and blurry to his ears. "We never had a Christmas."

The whiskey seems to have quieted the voice at last, or at least fuzzed it into static, so he stops drinking for now. Lets his head tip back over his rickety wicker chair so he can count the cracks in his ceiling, see the moonlight pouring onto the floor—bars of light cut by the bars of his window.

_My dear, sweet Lancia. Still fighting? You'll never be free of me, you should know that by now. Now, go get your Boujou Reppan and go to Japan. I have work for you._

This time the words are deeper, mocking and commanding, no longer a child's but not quite an adult's. Another memory, he tells himself, abandoning the glass to gulp carelessly from the bottle. The liquor burns his throat going down, but at least the burn distracts him from the restless need in his limbs. The need to stand up, sober up; to go book a flight for Narita International ASAP. Because the voice commands, and Lancia still can't help but obey.

"Not anymore," he tells the voice, between sips.

Eventually, Lancia realizes that he's swallowing nothing but air.

_Are you done now?_ The voice is impatient now, but it no longer echoes in his head like the voice of God Almighty.

"What do you want?" he asks wearily, slouching over his table. He manages, on the second try, to set the bottle down next to its brethren; one already empty, one still full. He eyes it without enthusiasm—maybe a little more will be enough keep the voice quiet for good?

_I really do need for you to go to Japan._

"Not for you," he informs the voice, relishing the words as they roll off his tongue. So he says them again, each syllable solid and clear. "Not. For. You."

_Not for me?_ There's a thoughtful silence, and then—

This time it's not a voice that comes to him but an image—ima_ges,_ and sound and color and fury—a mass of men and women clad in black leather; coats double breasted and fastened with steel as cold as their hearts. He recognizes the uniform of the Vongola's infamous Varia _(I thought you might);_ who wouldn't, even if they've been quiet of late.

They pour into a school, onto a basketball court where a group of teenagers stand in a group, backs to each other _(Do you remember the new Vongola Guardians?);_ they look battered and tired and so very small. As one, the Varia fall upon them like ravening wolves; the kids take a few with them but they're too young, too unseasoned—and they fall, one by one, until only one man stands. Orange flame engulfs his gloved hands, hovers on his forehead just beneath his spiky brown hair _(You recall who Vongola Decimo is, don't you?);_ he's fighting and fighting and his moves are powerful but they're unskilled; the Varia are falling but there are just too many and they're just too good—

The orange flames sputter and die, huge brown eyes drifting from blank focus to just blank.

_Don't think of it as a favor to me,_ the voice says sweetly.

"Tomorrow," Lancia mumbles into his hands, defeated. "I'll…tomorrow."

Coordinates—no, a route—drop with icy precision in the heated slush of his thoughts. _Remember to bring your Boujou Reppan with you~_

The next day Lancia wakes up from his hangover, spends an hour retching into his toilet before taking a long, hot shower. And then he calls up Alitalia and books a flight for Narita International that evening, before arranging for a courier to take care of his ball and chain.

He gets dressed slowly, trying not to jar his pounding head too much, but also because he relishes the ability to choose again. Choose? Really? His closet is lined with nothing other than business suits; what choice does he have? He likes to think of them as penance, in a way—wearing the uniform of his famiglia in honor of the famiglia he no longer has. It's better lounging around dressed like the voice's pet.

Boxers, undershirt. Dress shirt—white, today. Trousers, black as usual, tuck in the shirt before doing up the snake-shaped buckle. Thread the black silk tie through the collar and knot it.

He pauses in front of the mirror. Looped around the base of his neck is the braided leather collar he'd worn for three years, all the years the voice had held him in thrall. For no particular reason he could discern, he'd had the buckle fixed and had never actually stopped wearing it.

Lancia fingers it, thinks about taking it off at long last. It feels like an empty gesture, though, when he considers why he's about to board a plane for the other side of the world. Token protest. The voice would laugh.

He buttons his shirt up to the throat, tightens his tie, and shrugs into his black blazer. Perhaps the collar is another kind of penance, too.

The Varia are good, but Lancia's better. He also has a lot of spare anger lying around—at the voice, at himself.

He does feel bad for littering Namimori Town with all the bodies, though.

(And maybe, just maybe, he feels just a tiny bit grateful to the voice for getting him there in time.)

_(Kufufufufu,_ the voice says. _I knew you would.)_


End file.
